Bad habits
by Backgroundnoise
Summary: He had enough love to save the both of them.


Disclaimer: I don't own Prison Break, sad but true.  
Rating: R  
Summary: He had enough love to save the both of them.

Pairing:Michael/Sara

Spoilers for 4x01 and 4x02.  
To my very patient and very lovely Maria.  
Title: Bad habits

By Lylou

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"_-__It's not your fault. It's not."_

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She really didn't know how it started.

It was the same old sad and pathetic story of her life: getting dragged through the events of her life without even knowing when everything went to hell.

Or maybe not.

Maybe it was just the opposite; maybe she was the one who irreparably caused these things to happen, maybe it was some kind of Tancredi proverbial fate…

The guilt.

The second night there, Sara Tancredi ran fast, without wanting to stop and head back to the narrow and silent bed she had left in the dusty warehouse.

That night, all the pain, hate, fury, desolation and fear overflowed her emotional gates and made her go unnoticed to a dark and shabby bar relatively near the warehouse.

She could smell the sour scent of the saltpeter and hear the sound of the waves crashing against the concrete pier over and over again; she loved the ocean, she always had. Even now, when all it held was a dark and vague promise to her.

To them.

Because apparently the great Sara Tancredi could come back from the dead, but she couldn't stay sober long enough to spend the whole night in a small bed with the man she loves.

Because she really does love Michael Scofield; every scar, bruise and guilty part of her is sure of that.

But suddenly she seems to be dangerously near the place where everything started turning into a mess for her.

In a bar.

Sitting on a stool, smelling the unforgettable and familiar scent of smoke, loneliness and alcohol in the dark air of the place, with a glass of cheap, sharp and very missed whiskey in her hand, she was waiting for one of the men in there to take the empty stool next to her. Or worse yet; maybe _he_ would wake up and find her, like he always did. _"Even when you are dead, even the rest of the world including yourself, thinks that you are dead, he finds you. Michael Scofield - always to the rescue"_

Sara smiled bitterly to herself and brought the thick glass to her lips, until she could feel the taste of the metallic and sharp alcohol in her mouth, slipping down her throat, the miserable liquid burning everything. She was now a step farther from salvation than the night before.

"_As if there were__ any hope or salvation for the both of you by now, because as far as you know there aren't many super-heroes with nose bleeds."_

It is not his fault and she knows it. She is actually pretty sure about that, but on nights such as these, making everything his fault is just too fucking tempting to resist. Because making Michael Scofield suffer makes her own pain more bearable; because she is weak. She always has been weak when it comes to guilt and that weakness makes her fall into her bad and destructive habits over and over again; such as alcohol.

She raised her glass in silence and smiled lacking humor before swallowing the yellowish alcohol in one go.

Sara closed her eyes and felt the poison inside her, burning her mouth, her throat and her digestive tract while it drove her away from salvation; and for those precious moments in which her body tried to recover from the poison inside her, nothing else but the burning and the dizziness existed for her and she re-discovered in secret that she loved those short moments.

Sara made a silent and universal gesture to the barman and smiled at him when he refilled her empty glass, while she continued waiting in that stool.

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During the first seconds, when Michael woke up he was sure that she was dead.

That he had lost her forever and that no bloody and tragic revenge was going to bring her back to him.

So, after some seconds more of unbearable pain and grief Michael remembered that she wasn't actually gone forever; the joy however vanished quickly when he realized that he was in an empty bed. Again.

Michael sighed frustrated and kicked the covers –which still had her scent—before realizing that he was having the worst headache in the world and that the pillow was stained with blood. Again.

And it wasn't his fault what had happened to her --at least, that was what she used to tell him, so many times and in such a convincing manner that Michael had almost convinced himself of that to be true. The thought that he was somehow responsible for the pale scars on her back made him feel sick, and on nights like these, when he woke up half dressed and startled in a small bed without her, it was just too fucking tempting to think that it was actually, his fault.

Slowly, he shifted to the edge of the bunk, hanging his head between his hands, worriedly rubbing his cropped hair, while he was trying to figure it out if he were going to go out to find her again.

Of course, he was; after all it was his fault that she would wake up terrified and unable to stay with him for a whole night. So he was going to go find her like the previous two nights - find her sitting in a bar, poisoning herself with cheap alcohol, waiting for one of the swine there to lead her to the dark and dirty backstreet.

Suddenly he felt all his genius ideas, worries and every single thought leaving his mind quickly along with the haunted idea of his Sara with any other man in the world. He quickly got dressed, secretly knowing that Sara Tancredi was the one and only thing in the universe capable of emptying his always crowded and busy mind.

When Sara was "dead" and gone it was impossible to be mad at her. One thing that Michael remembered from his psychiatric visits during the lowest time in his life, was that people used to pass through an angry state during the grieving process; it was something relatively normal but he didn't, not with Sara.

The weight of her loss had filled everything inside him, making it impossible for Michael to feel anything other than that… nothing. But now, now that she was alive again it was much easier to be angry at her for dying. It was irrational, selfish and made him feel miserable, but it also left a bitter-sweet taste in his mouth, like a painful payback or a vicious victory for all the pain that her loss had caused at him.

Sitting on the edge of the bunk Michael sighed and looked at his ankle monitor for a few seconds; he wasn't going to worry about something like that now, besides Michael Scofield was always unable to think about anything else when Sara was involved.

Even now, when she had left –again—the relative safety of his side in their temporary bed and has left to go drink cheap whiskey in a lousy bar, while she waits for him to show up and rescue her for all the times that he did not save her. Bcause it was his fault.

But of course, Michael knew that she had to deal with everything that had happened to her in her particular and self-destructive way, so maybe hurting, pissing, blaming and making him want to die was her way of dealing with it.

And if it was, Michael was more than ready to play the part, no matter how many times she would leave their bed, or if she flirted with or even fucked a complete stranger in a dirty and dark backstreet. Michael would always forgive her; even if she wasn't able to overcome it ever. Even if his mere proximity in the bed made her feel that miserable and broken that she needed to go to a bar and get drunk enough to fuck strangers. After all, on nights like these Michael Scofield "liked" to think that it was all his fault, so by now it didn't matter to him if Sara wasn't able to love him anymore, because he had love enough to save the both of them.

Michael left the warehouse and the cool breeze and the saltpeter hitting him while he walked rushed along the shadowy boardwalk.

"_Maybe you can still save her. Maybe she just wanted to see the stars this time…"_

When he was finally standing outside the bar and everything was suddenly red-bright-neon colored, Michael closed his eyes and rubbed his nose bridge in a typical gesture of exhaustion.

The last one was only something sporadic and only it happened to him occasionally: like when they were at a dead end in their search for freedom, or when he saws Alex in his particular grief bubble on a corner, or at some small moment in what Fernando tells him about how it feels his little daughter in his arms… God, a daughter; sometimes Michael Scofield couldn't help to feel that somehow the future was happening without their permission; But the worst of all was undoubtedly when Sara would run away from his side; at nights like these, the lack of hope haunted Michael Scofield.

He pushed the heavy door open and his lungs filled with heavy smoke, loneliness and alcohol immediately. A few heads turned in his direction, but not her; Sara was sitting at the end of the bar with a golden drink in her hand and with that fragile and isolated air that always made her look ghost-like and distant.

"_Hell, after all she has come back __from the dead" _

Sara was wearing that intense green t-shirt that left her shoulders and her collarbone exposed, it was something small and insignificant but Michael secretly loved that t-shirt and the way it suited her; sometimes when she was wearing it he was unable to focus on anything else than the line of her pale shoulders or her long hair floating around her neck. God, that neck; and collarbone; and shoulders and everything else of her… Michael smiled slight and mischievously until he remembered painfully that the t-shirt showed part of her --and his-- white scars on the back; but of course Sara didn't know it and he wasn't going to tell her.

"-Seems that this is becoming a habit…"

Sara smiled without humor at the sound of his voice near her and took another drink of her golden poison without even looking at him. She felt the harsh alcohol trickle down her throat and closed her eyes.

Michael's voice had sounded hurt, possessive and worried, and Sara felt a rush of guilt mixed with the effects of the cheap alcohol. Refined and elegant as always Michel took the stool next to her and sat close to her and very suddenly very territorially let his long fingers caress her thigh briefly.

And then the other men there, the company, the warehouse, the rest of the world, the scars on her back… everything faded away for Sara.

She had already surrendered and she knew it, a bit of jealousy, a bit of worry, lovesick glances and a lot of guilt and as for her they could go back to that warehouse right now and hide under the covers again, but inside her in a very small and very, very mean spot, Sara couldn't help to feel that he still had to pay; just a little bit more.

So she whispered:

"-Yeah…well, you know what they say… bad habits die hard."

Michael's hand squeezed a bit harder around her thigh and Sara felt a warm vertigo in her stomach and her breath rushed at his touch. In the few nights they had spend together he had obsessively studied her, licked her, kissed her and touched her with the same accuracy and thoroughness in which Michael Scofield did everything else, and usually his very low and very sick-sweet voice into her ear at night was reason enough for her to not want to run away and not feel as if every one of them where totally out of grace, but not on nights like these. Not when she had found more blood stains on his side of the pillow.

"-Yeah… I know a bit about bad habits too"

Michaels voice sounded husky, broken and a bit guilty; she smiled weakly and with her eyes still fixed on the bottles at the other side of the wooden sticky bar, she smiled and let a small teasing chuckle escape when she whispered:

"-…I'm sure you do."

She smiled softly and continued, only half joking:

"-… After all, you have broken more laws than I."

Michael chuckled and sat quietly and a bit embarrassed. After a few seconds more of looking at her out of the corner of his greenish eye, he defended himself with no real interest:

"-Well… I'm not really sure of that."

He smiled slightly and looked lovingly at her; even now that she was broken, hurt and scared, she was beautiful.

Of his many bad habits, Sara Tancredi was his favorite one. And he knew it.

She looked at him for the first time since he entered the bar and blinked in silence before a small and teary smile appeared on her lips:

"-Yeah… me neither…"

Sara's voice sounded small and a bit embarrassed; now that everything was broken and burned and missing, and there was blood on his side of the pillow and scars on her back, and guilt and sorrow infecting everyone in that warehouse. She wasn't even going to mention the almost continued lack of hope or the other million of horrible things that they would never be able to overcome. So there she was again, unable to hold on to the scared and hot tears like a frightened little girl.

Her bottom lip quivered slightly and she felt Michael's warm and familiar hand leaving her thigh and caressing her cheek gently. And there he was, the great Michael Scofield --the first nose-bleeds hero she had known-- saving her again.

Because of her many bad habits, Michael Scofield was her favorite one.

"-Let's go."

Just two hot and husky words and Sara was down from the stool and leaning slightly against him, feeling his arm closed tightly around her waist, while they left the bar. Again. At least, until the next time she needed to be saved.

Sara closed her eyes a little and let Michael guide her slowly and in a comfortable silence back to the warehouse again, feeling the cool breeze in her face, the saltpeter, his familiar hand on her waist and his calm breathing upon her hair.

Sara couldn't help but think that maybe the next time she would not need go to that crappy bar, maybe the next time it would be enough to fight the lack of hope by just staying at his side in their bed, or just walking along the concrete dock to see the stars…

The end.

Comments are love.


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